Christ the King
“To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever. Amen.”
1 Timothy 1.17
Christ, the King of Glory.
It’s a funny word ‘glory’. As a boy, my theological development was greatly hindered because I had an Aunty Glory, and thought that all references were to her.
When I spoke at her funeral a couple of years ago I discovered she was named glory because my grandmother had given birth to 7 boys and when the midwife said ‘it’s a girl!’ the response came back - ‘glory be!’ And so she was.
I started looking at the origins of the word ‘glory’ while studying Isaac Newton at university. He taught himself Hebrew and Greek so he could better understand the Scriptures. And he was fascinated with the stories of Moses and ‘glory’.
The word in Hebrew ‘kabod’, means heaviness or weight, and Newton became convinced that Moses had hidden the inverse square law of gravitational attraction in the text of the Pentateuch.
He had hidden it so that common people would not discover it and abuse the knowledge. This prisca sapientia, ancient wisdom, was there for the true theological scholar to discover - God would reveal it to him. So Newton spent years sifting through the Hebrew text with various mathematical cyphers. Newton needed to get out more…
The OT in fact develops the idea, not from the inverse square law of gravitational attraction, but from an eminent man who had heavy possessions; heavy bags of money; heavy responsibilities - and even many heavy wives. A heavy man displayed gravitas. (Four years at St Mary’s and sadly I’m fast developing gravitas.)
When the OT was translated into Greek, (the Septuagint of the 2nd and 3rd century) the word ‘doxa’ was used to translate ‘glory’. It comes from the root word meaning ‘to think’ or ‘to seem’ and in classical Greek meant reputation (what others think of us) and opinion (what we ourselves think). And this is tied up with fame, honour, praise.
There’s one more little element left in this etymological tale.
In Scripture, whenever God displayed his crushing heaviness of being, his glory, there was Light - lightening, or blinding light, or a shining cloud, or a pillar of fire - the Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Listen to these verses from Exodus:
Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. But, you cannot see my face, for no-one may see me and live." Then the LORD said, "There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen." (Ex 33.18-23)
Moses is told it is unbearable and all God would show was the shadow of his glory - his goodness - his moral perfection and beauty.
So the glory of God is full of light. He dwells in unapproachable light. Christ, the King of Glory, is the effulgence (as St Paul puts it) - the shining radiance - of God’s glory. And in that light of Christ we see ultimate moral beauty.
As Christians, we are summoned to follow Christ, the King of Glory, so that as we feed on him, we too begin to reflect the glory of God. We become heavier, more substantial, more solid.
It is a great mystery of the Christian life, testified to by all the saints, that as we grow in faith, spiritual realities become, not more certain, but more solid, almost tangible.
“Solid joys and lasting treasures, none but Zion’s children know.” John Newton (Glorious things...)
In CS Lewis’s allegory about heaven and hell, Pilgrim’s Regress, and in the Narnia Stories - everything is more solid in heaven. The present life on earth becomes ‘thin’ and insubstantial, wraithlike in comparison. We live in the shadowlands.
Our society talks much of ‘spirituality’ - the buzzword of school Ofsted inspections. But there is little focus to that spirituality; and indeed often a denial that there is any objective ‘other’; the transcendent God seen in Christ the King of Glory.
Because of this absent substantiator in postmodern society; an absence of the One who gives weight to human existence, there is a lack of solidness in society, of glory, of weight. We are all surface and image.
Not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of surface and image occasionally. I was shopping in Cambridge with my image advisor on Friday. He steered me away from some very sensible looking trainers (those are a kind of casual shoe) in Clarks and I now possess a pair of almost indistinguishable trainers from Raw at only twice the price.
But if image is all there is, then we are empty, and manipulated by the fashions of the age.
Nietzsche of all people recognised this: “When there is the ‘death of God’ in a culture, it becomes increasingly hollowed out, ‘weightless’”.
One of my fellow students at theological college was good at everything. And he knew it. So nobody liked him very much. There was much schadenfreude when he was rusticated for a term for driving a mini car through the front doors of the college - I think substances were also involved. Someone pinned a large notice above his door with the single word in Hebrew:
Ichabod - the glory has departed.
It was the name given to Eli’s grandson Ichabod, who was born just after a particularly crushing defeat by the Philistines who also stole the Ark of the Covenant which represented the glory of God.
In fact it’s a rather tragic little story which the Jewish writer turns into a little joke at the end. “And it came to pass, when the messenger made mention of the ark of God, that Eli fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy. (I Sam 4)
So the grandson, born at the same time is called Ichabod, the glory has departed - or, the heavy one has departed.
Ichabod might be a suitable epitaph for the last 20 years: much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight. Believe but don’t belong.
It is a simple truth of the Christian faith that we must not neglect the spiritual because of the ever pressing needs of the secular.
To neglect nurturing our relationship with Christ is to increase our superficiality and weightlessness. It is an ultimate vanity.
In our tradition music and liturgy play a great part in nourishing our spiritual life. Christ, the transcendent King of glory cannot be grasped by reason alone.
The glory of our music, our architecture, our liturgy - these are all supposed to draw us into the weightier glory of God.
So on this Feast of Christ, the King of Glory, as he is exalted in the beauty of the music, as he is lifted up in the sacraments, as we contemplate Christ: crucified, risen, ascended and glorified...
...so may this weight of glory make us people of substance, able to serve Christ the King; able to offer solid joy to others.
“To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever. Amen.”
1 Timothy 1.17
